There is a lot of energy on campus right now to take action, following a survivor’s account of university indifference and retaliation. Let’s begin to direct our energy to impactful action by first learning about Title IX and the history of student activism against rape culture at Harvard. Join us next Wednesday at 4pm in Boylston 103! RSVP here: https://www.facebook.com/events/561184383996105/

Know Your IX is a campaign founded and led by student survivors and allies to educate students about Title IX, which mandates that universities that receive federal funding proactively create a campus free of sexual discrimination/violence. Our organizers have contributed to various sections of the website. KYIX is looking for anti-violence activists to be part of this team.

The media coverage of sexual assault on college campuses in the past year has been very white washed, even though sexual violence continues to haunt the lives of those who are not wealthy heterosexual white women who did everything “right.” To counter the media erasure of the “more difficult narratives” (read: not white, not woman, not straight), KYIX is encouraging:

We particularly encourage people from historically marginalized groups, including but not limited to people with disabilities, people of color, trans people, queer people, first- or second-generation immigrants (including undocumented people), and people from low income families. We also encourage students from types of schools often overlooked in discussions of campus violence, and survivors of forms of sexual and gender-based violence commonly ignored by anti-violence efforts (relationship abuse, same-sex violence, etc.) to apply. KYIX is a student-driven campaign, so we will prioritize applications from those currently or recently enrolled as students and those directly impacted by campus violence.

“While those most likely to report initiating unwanted sexual contact in their early to mid-teens were boys, girls were among the perpetrators as the age of respondents increased. Latino and African American youths, and those from low-income families, were less likely to have coerced another person to engage in sex than were whites and those from higher-income families, the study found.

[…]

Coercive tactics, including arguing, pressuring, getting angry or making someone feel guilty, were most commonly reported by those who acknowledged attempted or completed rape. And the study found that 75% of the cases of sexual violence occurred in the context of a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.”